I just know if I start talking about character depth, this will be a long post.

     The characters are, essentially, the heart of any story. And in games, a media that combines just about every narrative platform and therefore immersing you in the story from every angle, the characters must be that bit stronger than in any other type of media. You’re not reading a book, where aesthetics and voices are left to your imagination, nor are you watching a film, where your only task is to watch the drama unfold with no involvement in the story at all. In a game, you have to connect with the character you play as- you don’t necessarily have to sympathise with them, or be on their side, but there needs to be a connection there. If the protagonist is a general all-round genuine jerk, you may not agree with him, but a well-written game will still have you understand why he does what he does, and feel some degree of empathy toward him. The same isn’t quite so essential in, say, film; you’re taking a backseat in the story. You can hate whoever you want to hate and sympathise with whoever you like and it won’t have such an impact on your immersion in the story. That isn’t to say that only games get this effect down-pat, of course.

     Anyway, characterisation is constructed from a number of ingredients; aesthetics, the characters outward appearance, script, the personality the writers have assigned and the mannerisms they may be given, and acting, the way the actor or, in this case, voice actor, translates concept into form.

     The harmony of these elements is what creates a realistic, believable character. The way a characters personality and voice match or contrast their appearance creates the depth of their personality on a whole other level than it could be written or drawn or acted out. A hench bodybuilder-looking tank-type character gives off an entirely different aura when he has a falsetto or child-like voice and is terrified of his own shadow, for example.

     I’m going to bring a few case studies into this, just to show some examples of perfect characterisation, and the difference between how it can be achieved in-game as opposed to other media. The first has to be (don’t hate me for bringing an anime into this) One Piece- visually, nothing beats One Piece in terms of character diversity. Manga and anime is pretty well-known for having cliché characters who all have the same face. OP couldn’t be more opposite, taking just about every cliché in the book and tearing it to shreds in some way or another (if a story features a character associated with gothic culture, for example, they will always, without a doubt, be a total badass, right? Only in OP would the guy with the ability to manipulate shadows, who lives in a haunted castle with a mad scientist creating an army of zombies for him, be a fat guy with a high, annoying voice). Then there’s the fact that when Oda bases a character on a real person, the resemblance can be somewhat genius.

     As for acting, the voice actors chosen are simply perfect (the godawful dubs are excluded) a running theme in One Piece is to give characters a voice that completely contrasts their appearance and/or personality- usually the voice is chosen to fit the personality but contrast the appearance, but sometimes all three clash. But in a way that works well- this is usually done in the case of villainous characters, in a way that instils our immediate hatred of them before we even learn their nature.
     But what makes OP amazing is the amount of depth in every character. Everybody in One Piece has at least one hindering weakness, be it a general lack of intelligence, a ridiculous lack of any sense of direction, or being honestly, hinderingly, pathetically wimpy (the character in question wins about 3 fights in the whole series, ALL of which through trickery and lies, and NONE of which without making a determined attempt to run like hell first). But the real crowning feature, and the core point I was getting at before, is how you connect with the world of One Piece through the main characters. And this is built up and pulled off as an art form. Throughout the series, no matter what happens, Luffy, with Main Protagonist Power, will always show up to save the day, against all odds, always knowing what to do and, most importantly, what to say to put those around him on the right track. In this way, such faith in him is built up in the viewer that when finally, Luffy is completely helpless to save his crew and watches his own brother die to save him, it actually comes as a shock to the viewer- when Luffy breaks down, the entire feel of the show takes a whole new direction for a while.

     Then there’s the PS2 game Ico, possibly the polar opposite of One Piece. The game is about Ico, a boy with horns exiled from his town and locked in a labyrinth, and Yorda, a girl who speaks a strange foreign language and is also locked in the labyrinth, for reasons unknown. Ico must guide Yorda out of the labyrinth with him, a task made increasingly difficult by numerous shadow-beings hunting Yorda (and the fact that Yorda is kind of a huge wuss).This is literally the only setup we receive, and very little is revealed throughout the game. In fact, the only way we know Ico was exiled because of his horns is because it says so in the manual. This is bordering on an avatar/actor scenario; an ‘actor’ being a character the player actually plays as, and an avatar being simply an incarnation of the player oneself in the game world. In order for an actor-type character to be effective, they have to have a lot of just that: character. They must be accessible for us as an audience. Yet, in this situation, Ico is certainly an actor-type character, yet we know very little about him, even his personality. But somehow you do connect with Ico- possibly through Yorda. That is, rather than connecting with either one character, you feel for the bond between Ico and Yorda, who despite having just met and not even speaking the same language, neither understanding why the other is sealed in the same situation, develop a strong bond and the need to protect one another. Just watch the cutscene of when they first meet, at the start of the game (skip to 9:05).

     There is little to say about voice-acting since the whole game contains all of about 5 lines of speech, none of which is in any real language (aside from Yorda’s mysterious language, subtitles to which are only unlocked after completing the game once, Ico speaks a fictional language that apparently was derived from a combination of Japanese and Pig-Latin). And in these few lines of speech, it’s impossible to gauge either characters personality. However, it’s easy to pick up on Ico’s strong will and willingness to protect Yorda no matter what, and Yorda’s complete kind gentleness without the use of script at all. This is partly visual- both are complete opposites in appearance, Ico looking scruffy and boyish while Yorda’s skin and dress are both such a pale white she practically glows all the time. But it’s also partly down to the life-like animation; there’s something endearing about the way Yorda shakes her head and backs up if Ico calls her down from a ledge that’s too high to jump, for example. And so much detail is put into the AI; when you step outside, if there’s a bunch of birds nearby, Yorda will playfully run toward them and watch them fly away, sometimes turning to Ico and pointing at the birds (it’s adorable). You grow to somehow know both characters personalities despite almost without words at all.

I always write these things and fail to upload them...

So there are certain rules in the process of designing an environment; the first would have to be, be sure the environment is technically accurate. If the setting is in the Mediterranean, for example, make sure the trees, plantlife etc are all elements one would expect to find there.

     Secondly, do the research- study each individual element of the scene in real life before attempting to draw it from memory.

     Finally, try to include some sort of narrative, or open some kind of mystery, in the finished scene, or evidence of the things that have transpired there.

Environments and scenery are my huge kryptonite and I need to iron that out. Which makes this Environment Design project pretty difficult for me (BUT I CALL IT A CHALLENGE). As such, this is one of the few projects I haven’t started without seeing an image in my head to start from; I’m genuinely completely lost.

     Anyway, my technique for setting myself some kind of starting point to work from is to take random words from the dictionary and see what fits together, and what the words combined connotate. In this case, I’m naming the area before I design it; candidates so far are Paper Bastion, Vector-Raster, Empyreal Cocytus, or a combination thereof.

So my favourite places in games have always been the ones that just feel truly, hauntingly empty. Inside the moon in Zelda: Majora’s Mask, the dream-sequence Zanarkand in Final Fantasy X, the strange “hidden rooms” and bonus maps (and the arena where you fight the Phases) in .hack//, the river where you fight The Sorrow in MGS3, and the very bottom of Aperture Science in Portal 2 are all perfect examples. These areas were all an abrupt and drastic change of scenery, and became instantly memorable because they were so out-of-place with what you knew so far about the world of the game in question. Not only were they radically different, but you were suddenly completely cut off from the rest of the world- it felt like the game itself telling you “You’re on your own, dude”.

     So that’s exactly the feeling I want to achieve. Maybe by throwing in some surreal elements the way .hack// did.

Ideas are coming together; I decided I wanted to do something different with the sky, and possibly the surface of the ground. Cue bullet point format due to my short-attention-span brain and its lack of ability to process paragraphs.

-          The sky I might replace with a ceiling, as if the environment exists in a closed space. Possibly a checkerboard-pattern.

-          Or, the checkerboard pattern could work for the ground instead. But instead of a flat ground, an uneven, more organic one, like rocks or sand, only with an unnatural texture. Pavement would work just as well here.

-          I kind of like the idea of static, too. Like, television snowstorm static, making it look like the object isn’t quite there.

-          Telegraph poles. I want telegraph poles in here; but placed really randomly and all the wires are crossed over and tangled. For the horizon I might use a typical city skyline silhouette, but with said telegraph poles sticking randomly out of the sides of the buildings like some sort of fungus. Basically, I want them in place of trees or plantlife, as if they’d just sprouted and spread, the way weeds do when a place in abandoned.

-          …I think I’ve pretty much decided there isn’t going to be much colour in this place. Shadoes of grey methinks.

-          Red water. Apart from the red water. The water will be the only colour here, since water is an element that symbolises purity, and so is fire, which is associated with red. But I don’t want the water to look like blood, nor do I want to replace it with fire because fire is too energetic; water is still. It could work if it’s noticeably transparent, though.

-          What if I use static for the sky instead? If it looks like the sky isn’t in place, the whole environment would feel literally man-made, from scratch, right down to the ground and sky.

-          I think I have some scenes forming for some of the names I came up with. If I name it Empyreal Cocytus, there will be a river of red water with white waterlilies, and a bunch of stalagmites with a black-and-white checkerboard pattern. The idea here is that the river is comparable to the river Styx, leading to the underworld (‘Empyreal’ means ‘sky-like’ and Cocytus is another name for purgatory). For Paper Bastion, the entire surface will be submerged, with white islands dotted around from which the telegraph poles emerge, but in the distance there will be a random out-of-place fairytale-like castle. While the surface is in muted tones, the castle will be bright and colourful. I’m not sure whether it will be protruding from a small planet/moon or an upside-down floating island or something else altogether- I kind of don’t want it to be hanging from anything, lest it take away from the mystery.

-          Actually, I think I’m going with Paper Bastion, I like the castle idea.

I’ve drawn out the components of the final scene; I settled on bringing in the white lilies too- I figured it would feel a whole lot more ominous to have something alive but that you can’t interact with than being completely alone.

     Anyway, I’ve decided that Paper Bastion would be an RPG environment. Only, not a conventional area or level; each time the player dies or otherwise make a fatal decision, instead of ‘Game Over’ and losing progress, the player is instead sent to Paper Bastion, where one must run toward the castle in order to return. The first few times the player dies, this is simply a case of doing just that; running toward the castle until respawned shortly before one died, each time starting further and further away. But the more the player dies, the less forgiving Paper Bastion is. Soon, the water becomes damaging, meaning one has to run from island to island where health is regained. A couple of deaths later and the player is pursued by random enemies the player has defeated (similarly to the fight with The Sorrow in Metal Gear Solid 3), which progressively spawn in greater numbers with each visit.

     Also, it would be awesome if Paper Bastion was the setting for the final boss fight, and the castle was actually the final dungeon, although you wouldn’t know it at the time unless you’d stumbled upon a hidden clue (say, if there was only a few certain spots where you could see far enough into the sky through a window to notice the red water and telegraph poles above you). You land the finishing blow thinking it’s over, but wind up in PB; no bgm in the background, no skills and no healing, just one final straight-up (deliberately easy) fight to make you feel awesome.
     Finally, I come back to the ‘rules’ I talked about in the beginning. In retrospect, I came up with something pretty evasive, being set in a surreal, sparse world (is this cheating…?). But, I did the research- waterlilies aren’t all that abundant in Biggleswade (just weeds…) and so I was forced to resort to the interweb, however. I was actually driven to Google images for the telegraph poles too, of all things- the only type nearby are the type that just look like huge stakes in the ground, with nothing at the top. In the distance on the horizon line of PB, they could be literally anything, so the design was too simple. But I didn’t want the kind that has too much detail, as they’d wind up looking like deformed trees. When I pussied out and checked google however, the exact image I had in my head was on the first page, so I took that as good enough. I did have a couple of books at my disposal when it came to the castle, however.
     I want PB to be full of questions; for the player to question how the telegraph poles came to be there, whether the castle is upside-down or if they are the one that’s upside-down, how the lilies, something living, can bloom, or if they are even alive. I love surrealist art- I love the way Renee in particular can create questions about the image they are portraying (Is the apple huge or is the room small? Does the man with an apple in front of his face even have a face?), and how not being sure can inspire a feeling of uneasiness looking at his work. I wanted to capture some of this; I suppose I’m less trying to portray a narrative than inspire emotion. I had, however, had an idea to show underneath the water; the roots from the lilies would stretch down along with similiar ones from the underside of the island, to create a kind of dark forest at the bottom, where a greyscale version of my character, Milo, would be sitting against a root in the fetal position. There would be a staircase leading up to the surface, emerging right around the island she is standing on. I scrapped this idea due to lack of time, but it would be cool to add some more depth (literally), so if I finish earlier than I expected, I may be able to include it anyway.

Final image complete!

I desaturated the red in the water a little, it looked too bright. I want the surface to look dull and lifeless, while the castle is vibrant and inviting. I didn't have time to include the underwater staircase- but I may return to this at a later date. it was an idea I really liked.

     OK, a few words on Game Design…

     So firstly, it’s not difficult to spot that through gaming’s evolution over the years, many things have not been lost, dating way back to board games. So we’re talking prehistory, here. The earliest known board game is Senet, invented in ancient Egypt, the rules of which are still unknown, but can be assumed to play similar to chess. So, let’s take a look at the boards of Senet, Chess/Draughts, and Battleships. Remind you of anything?

     So that’s strategy games basically covered; then there’s games that involve simply getting from place to place- usually based on luck, such as the rolling of the die, but more importantly, many games will have gimmicks on certain or all tiles. In other words, once the player reaches a tile/area, the player must take an action/overcome a trial based on where they are on the board/game-world. See where I’m going with this? In fact, one could consider Monopoly to be the first (game) World Map. Okay, so obviously the concept of the World Map is far more likely to be based off of actual maps- it’s more like games have borrowed elements from ye olde boarde. Such as ‘Warp Zones’, and in games where your route is automated (such as Starwing), being able to alter your course from the standard (or indeed logical) route by performing to a certain standard, taking a different route, or performing certain actions.

     Then we have card games. In Poker, we make decisions based on our prediction of what our opponent is thinking. Cheat is based on trickery and memory (that old trick of claiming to put down two cards of the same number/suite, and actually putting down three or four?), while Pontoon is based on a mixture of luck and decision-making and Snap, of course, is all about reflexes and reaction time. All of these pretty much sum up a vast majority of video games, right? The only major exception being the point-and-click genre, which is basically Cluedo. (Adventure games are an odd one, since they derive more from text-based adventure games, which came pretty much directly from literature, so one could think of the Adventure genre as adopted by games).

     It’s not just games with rules, though; isn’t The Sims just a huge digital custom-made dolls house? (Dolls with a hard-wired passionate instinctive NEED to commit mass-murdering kamikaze arson should they so much as glance at a barbeque. Or a microwave. Or a toaster…) Isn’t the Character Creation feature in countless fighting games and MMORPGs just guys playing Barbie without their sexual orientation feeling threatened?

     …But basically, when you boil it all down to the very basics, games are simply a series of decisions. Much like real life, only getting one wrong can’t ruin everything forever in the real world. Because you crazy we crazy humans like making decisions: it makes us feel important.

Aaaaah I guess that post I posted weeks ago didn't get posted at all.

Musing of the Day: “Life is like a box of chocolates- you never know what you’re going to get.” What a ridiculous saying. You know exactly what you’re going to get, until they bastardise the orange creams by replacing them with orange truffles. There’s a little leaflet telling you what all the fillings are, look. If life is like a box of chocolates, it’s not because you don’t know what you’re going to get; it’s 1, because it’s just like life to make twice as many hard caramels as every other flavour knowing full well that nobody in the world likes them and every single one will get thrown away with the packaging, untouched, and 2, because it’s also typical of life to sometimes put what all the fillings are on the underside of the box.

     So I uploaded this sometime mid-christmas and returned here only to find I'd actually uploaded it never. Which may be down to my internet being a huge jerk nobody likes or (most probably) I just didn't hit the 'publish' button or something equally blonde...

     So I’m FINALLY getting to play Skyward Sword over Christmas, and OH GOD does it live up to my expectations. It has all the lightheartedness that Wind Waker tried so hard to capture and just flattened by being A Crap Game (although I do miss the darkness in Ocarina of Time and, especially, Majora’s Mask). The artwork is stunning and the graphics live up to it, and the music is just BEAUTIFUL. I’ve also finally got around to getting some random character designs down on paper (as I type this out in Word, I begin to wonder if I actually know how to upload images in Blogger. …Um.)

     (Ah, so apparently yes I do, but for some reason they've scanned in as BMPs, despite my scanner being set to JPG, and crash when I try to upload them. So I suppose these mystery pics will remain mysterious until a later post. Exasperated siiiiigh.)

     …Uh, so basically, I’ve gone into Christmas Meltdown. Or maybe it’s just Biggleswade Meltdown (this place has that effect).  Either way, I know my mental state is deteriorating when I start to smell dinner and take out my headphones to smell it better. Either way, I know I’ll crawl out of this pit of contented lethargy soon enough. I just wish it wasn’t so comfy. In the meantime I shall worry about the big, scary presentation project coming up. I’ve actually changed my mind like a hundred times over which game to review, and now have half-finished powerpoint’s for Shadow of Memories, Majora’s Mask and Psychonauts. I really want to go for Majora's Mask, but a Zelda game might be too well-known so I guess I’ll end up going for one of the other two. EITHER WAY, IT’S NEVER GOING TO BE ANYTHING REMOTELY TOPICAL. I’m keeping up my trend of playing games years after I should have if it’s the last thing I do.

     Also, every post from now on will probably be beefed out with contain a ‘Random Musing of the Day’. These will usually be completely irrelevant, and sometimes…they’ll be completely irrelevant. They will never be relevant.

     Peace off, internet.

This could go on a while, you might want to pull up some snacks or something.

Musing of the day: I don’t know about you, but if I was an evil villain hellbent on world domination, my first point of call would be to steal the crystals/stars/jigsaw pieces/bananas/etc of an anthropomorphic woodland creature, which  I would then scatter across 7-10 diversely lush and zany worlds full of conveniently placed difficult, yet completely solvable, puzzles, eventually leading them to my lair where they could beat the living crap out of me.

     I feel cliché going for a Zelda game (my defense is that it’s the black sheep of the series in so many ways) but I just have to open a fresh can of unrelenting passionate worship for The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask. I believe I’ve already had a small rant about this in a previous post, so consider this an expansion on Why This Game Is Awesome.

     Majora’s Mask plays more or less identical to Ocarina of Time, being it’s direct sequel, but contrasts it’s predecessor in just about every other way. MM is full of heavy, dark undertones (and overtones, really)- rather than the classic Zelda plot of ‘good vs. evil’, this instalment places a lot of emphasis on the blur between good and evil. The plot is that the Skull Kid has become possessed by the titular Majora’s Mask and using it’s power, causes the moon to fall (the same moon that scares the living hell out of me scared me as a kid. LOOK. AT. IT), crashing into Termina and destroying the world. Link is sent on his Epic Quest Of Heroicness by the Happy Mask Salesman- but only has three days in which to save the world, and help as many people as possible along the way, in a three-day Groundhog Day Loop. The underlying twist is that the Skull Kid is just out to create a little mischief in the hope of causing his friends, four giants who show up and the end of the game to hold up the moon, to return- he doesn’t seem to grasp the damage he’s causing (world destruction) at all. Not to mention that the Happy Mask Salesman’s motives are questionable- it wouldn’t be entirely unreasonable to assume he only gained the mask in the first place to cause havoc and destruction himself. And yet you’re returning it to him. Then there’s the fact that the creepy children near the end of the game all look suspiciously a lot like him.

     The game is packed full of sidequests, all of which are entirely worthwhile either for comedic value, some truly heart-gut-pulling moments, or simply to understand a little more about the random side-characters in Termina. And almost every single character, no matter how brief their appearance or how insignificant their role, has at least a little depth written in. For example, the swordsman who sits in his Dojo for most of the three days boasting that he’s unafraid of the moon crashing into Termina, as he will cut it in half with his sheer unrivalled strength…can be found in the last few hours of the third day hiding in the back room crying and pleading for his life. Visiting the ranch in the last few hours scores you a cute but sad scene where the eldest of two sisters tells the younger that she can try alcohol for the first time, as she finally recognises her as an adult. They then both leave, telling you, of all things, “See you tomorrow”. Bear in mind that all of this is accompanied by the saddest, most hopeless music you will ever hear.

     And then there’s the sidequest about Kafei and Anju, an engaged couple, the former of whom disappeared because the Skull Kid turned him into a child and a theif stole his half of a ceremonial wedding mask, which Kafei cannot return to Anju without. It takes all three days to help Kafei recover the mask and tell Anju that he’ll return- on the night of the final day, when most of the town has evacuated, including the rest of Anju’s family, Anju stays behind to wait for Kafei. Those few minutes you spend standing there waiting with her, with that music playing, are probably the single saddest, most atmospheric few minutes in  gaming history. Especially since he doesn’t appear until literally the last minute.

     Anyway, more on the music. The Zelda series has always used music rather uniquely in that it’s almost used as a narrative tool, to draw links between environments or even characters (such as reusing the Serenade of Water from Ocarina of Time as the theme of the Zora queen in Twilight Princess). Nintendo have picked up a habit of creating such links by reversing classic tracks. In this case, part of the theme of Saria from OoT was reversed to create the Song of Healing in MM, probably to illustrate how juxtaposed the two worlds are; Saria’s Song being an upbeat, innocent song, while the Song of Healing is calming but melancholy. Then there’s the music in Clock Town (the peaceful ‘hub’ of the game), which changes with each day. Day One’s music  is a typical laidback-but-lively ‘Town Theme’. When the clock reaches Day Two, the music is sped up, and suddenly has a certain frantic feeling to it. But when Day Three arrives, nothing inspires more dread than when the lighthearted music is pierced by a chilling, ominous series of nightmare chords.

     Finally, the immensely genius twist MM takes is in the final dungeon, when you go inside the moon itself. Ever wondered what the inside of the moon looked like?

     Chances are you don’t expect an endless grassy, sunny field with a single tree. The first time you see it, you sit there mind-blown for a good few minutes before finally approaching. As you get nearer to the tree, you see four children (the same ones I mentioned earlier), each wearing a mask of one of the major bosses in the game, and one sitting alone wearing Majora’s Mask, asking you to play with him, the answer ‘yes’ being the trigger for the final boss fight.

     …I believe that concludes my epic rant, leaving me with nothing but another abrupt ending (seriously, how do people end these things conclusively? My posts always just leave off like there should be more because I honestly don’t know.)

     Peace off!

A brief rant on games journalism

Let me take a moment to babble some more; the topic is game journalism (it would seem). GO!

     A few things have always bothered me about game reviews, most of which boil down to the fact that they’re notoriously objective. I’m fairly mathematical in the way I think- I assign accurate percentages to about 78% of my thoughts (oh god, I didn’t even do that on purpose), so I do fully approve of objective rating systems. A review’s purpose is, after all, to deliver information to the reader in order to allow the reader to decide whether to buy Game A or Game B, and if Game B scored 1/10^th or 14% or whatever higher than Game A, that decision is made that bit easier. No, what I mean when I refer to objectivity, is all the outright redundant information reviewers feel they need to deliver. “MGS4 has a much wider range of weapons than it’s predecessors”. “Resi 4 has slightly sharper graphics on the Gamecube than the PS2 version”. And my personal favourite, said about many, many great games: “It loses points due to simply not being long enough”. Journalists: logic suggests that if you are marking a game down due it lacking in longevity, this means that you are disappointed because you wanted more of it, right? And if you wanted more of this game, that means you enjoyed it, right? Or am I missing something? Because lack of longevity is the worst reason I can think of to knock off points, and yet it’s one of the most frequent complaints that seems to completely destroy the reputation of some genuinely brilliant games.

     …Anyway, where was I. Ah yes. I was whining about people whining.

     Writers can complain about or sing praise for all these things a game can be lacking in or overcompensating with, but really: does it matter? How much does it affect the gameplay, and how much is it going to change your experience of the game? Graphics are important- they can turn an amazing game into a truly beautiful game. But can dated graphics actually ruin a decent game? And does it REALLY matter whether it’s in HD? (Actually, I suppose it does in some cases, where you’re expected to have either a HD TV or a microscope just to read the migraine-inducing bloody text…)

     Take Oblivion, of the Elder Scrolls series, for example. I played it a little once and yes, it’s a well-made game. It has a huge world with endless possibilities and some mighty fine graphics and animation (not so much on the people, but I could put up with that. I’ve seen worse). But I just…didn’t enjoy it. I’m not saying it’s a bad game, and it’s not not my thing, I should love it. But I couldn’t get into it. Contrast with the very little-known game Shadow of Memories, a game about a man who keeps getting murdered, and has to travel back in time to save his own life. Now there is some dodgy character modelling and awful animation, complete with truly cringeworthy voice acting. It’s just a horribly made game. But you know what? However poorly executed, it has a great story, and every chapter leads you from “what the hell am I supposed to do here…?” to the next part of the main story, and back to “aaaaah, I seeeee!” with elegance. It’s an amazing game that I finished with every ending, even the extra “New Game +” endings and the “Super-Awful-You-Just-Failed-At-This-Game-You-Complete-Berk” ending.

     What I’m trying to say is, yes, magazines can give us the solid information so we, The General Gaming Public, can decide our own opinion on a game, but that really doesn’t tell us anything about the game itself. What’s it like to step into the overworld for the first time? Will The Big Plot Twist make us go “WHOA.” or “I totally saw that coming” (without spoiling The Big Plot Twist, preferably)?

How it all began...

…And now I suppose all that’s left is my own history of how I got into games. Yeah, it’s one of those ‘origins’ episodes, I suppose.

     The first time I played a video game was when I was 4- this was 1996, smack bang in the peak of the 90’s, back when TV was (j)awesome and we all wore jelly shoes (which got lost in the sea. You didn’t even need to be near the sea, they would get lost in the sea. One day science will grant us the technology to brave tonnes of water pressure in order to find out more about our ocean, and what will we find? Jelly shoes. Gugles of them.). My neighbours handed down Ye Olde Commodore 64 along with a bigass crate of games, about 5 of which worked (and even those were dodgy, I remember the crash screen well…). And so the first game I played was Space Invaders, probably starting my trend of playing games years after they were popular (I started playing Disgaea recently), closely followed by Paper Boy, Battleships and some Scooby Doo game (TV spin-off games sucked then, too, I recall). And that was my only gaming experience for a few years, until IT came along.

     THE POKECRAZE. POKEMOOOOON.

     I think me and my friends talked about nothing but Pokemon for at least 2 years. Most people didn’t even play it, just watched the godawfully awesome anime (but we who did play the games were the total bosses). Ironically, as I type this out in Microsoft Word and see that little red line under the word ‘Pokemon’, I think pretty much the exact same thing I thought when I saw that red line 12 years ago; “Why the fork is Pokemon STILL not in the bloody dictionary!?” So this was 1999, when the Pokemans were just getting popular over here; the late 90’s, the age of Nickelodeon, Sunny D (with all the E numbers), SMTV Live and the word ‘wicked’. It was around this time that I spent a lot of time at my friend’s house playing copious amounts of Crash Bandicoot. So copious that my parents offered to get me a home console of my own; it was a choice between a PS1 (“the one that Beth has”) or a Nintendo 64 (“the one with Pokemon”). My answer was something like “POKEMOOOOOOONNNNNNN”.

     And oy vey, did I make the right choice. Pokemon games aside, nothing on the PS1 could ever even HOPE to match up to some of possibly The Best Games Of All Time. The Banjo-Kazooie games, for example. Banjo-Kazooie and Banjo-Tooie were just MADE of pure British humour, and the fact that most of it went right over your head when you were 7 or 8 only makes it more genius when you play it years later. Only Rare would think of the name “W. Anchor”. And then there’s the menu (“Seaman's surprise"...?) in the bar owned by the Token Obviously Gay Character and his transvestite barmaid. Oh, and this was back when games were hard, too; not false difficulty, but honestly, genuinely difficult.

     And then there was Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask. I don’t care if Ocarina of Time came with gold bars and chocolate, Majora’s Mask is the best Zelda, hands down. There is really nothing like those last few minutes of the three-day cycle, when the saddest, most epic music begins to play, and the clock in the bottom of the screen turns to a countdown. Majora’s Mask was so different to the rest of the Zelda series, and so much darker.

     Anyway, the mid-naughties were when I discovered other JRPGs than Pokemon, with Final Fantasy X (the last decent Final Fantasy game to be made), later followed by the Shin Megami Tensei series (the best of which being Digital Devil Saga, which has some really amazing character design and the most epic of soundtracks) and Phantom Brave (and eventually it’s predecessors, Disgaea and La Pucelle. See what I mean about playing games years after they’re popular?). And so that makes up the bulk of my gaming taste; RPGs and old-school platformers (…and the odd point-and-click).